Access and Media sections are not displayed

[dadio]

Hi!

We are using WB 2.6.5 on our production environment and everything was working fine until this weekend. I'm using the French language for the admin and the site.

All of a sudden, The Media and Access sections of the WB Admin site are not displaying properly.

The Media section is just not displaying at all, all we get is a blank page when we click on Media.

The Access section is displaying the two subsections Users and Groups, but when we click on Users, the only things displayed are the drop down with the list of users and the modify and delete buttons beside. There is also the Add new user title, but nothing under the title is displayed. When you choose a user from the drop down and click on the Modify button, you only get a blank page.

So we can't add new users manually or modify any user. The Group subsection is not affected. You can still add groups and modify them.

PLEASE HELP!! This is affecting our online site as we have many users depending on these features. One of the great things about WB is that you can have management of your site decentralized to many users, but now this problem is also affecting many users!!

See the print screens in attachment!!

Thanks!!

[ruebenwurzel]

Hello,

please try to remember what  you've done before this occurs. Did you looked with ftp dir at your server if all files are there? Also did you have a look at the database if all tables (users ...) are there?

Most issues with blank windows are caused from session handling of WB. WB stores user login in Sessions and when in options pages languages is enabled the language is added to the session id. If you change the user to another with anbother language without clearing the browser cache wrong datas could be stored in database wich could make the whol page broken in the worst case.

Unfortunately the whole usermanagement and also the page languages management has some bugs. Some of them fixed in WB 2.6.7 but some of them further exists.

So what could you do:
1. Look with ftp if all files are on the server. If you are not shure, upload the whole WB 2.6.5 package, except install folder and config.php again to your server. Overwrite all existing files.
2. If this didn't help, look at your database. In most cases you got your page working again if you set all settings in Database back to default EN. (http://help.websitebaker.org/pages/en/faq.php#question_31)

If your page works again i recommand to upgrade to WB 2.6.7.

Matthias

[dadio]

Thanks for the answer.

I will try every fix option you gave and I'll post my results.

Last Friday night, I did go on my server using ssh to look up some files in the Framework directory of WB. I will make sure every file there is present and then I'll check if other files are missing.

Thanks!

Alex.

[dadio]

I did as you said and now I get a blank page and no more site. This is my organization's site, so this is very bad.

Before, the only thing affected was some pages in the admin area, but now my whole site is just blank!!!

Please help and fast!!

Alex.

[dadio]

Hi!

Can anyone help me in this area??

I cannot afford to let my organization's website be down much longer.

I still have just a blank page!!!

How can I fix this??

Thanks!

Alex.

[dadio]

Hi!

I got an update on this.

I decided to remove everything from my site's root folder and make a backup of my WB DB. And reinstall from scratch WB 2.6.5. And import my backup.

Now, I have access to the admin panel, but I still get a blank page when I try to access any other page of my site.

So does this new info give anyone any clue as to how I can fix this problem??

Alex.

[DGEC]

I won't likely be much help, but more information will help.

Oh, but first... Standard response: check the file permissions. Especially since you were in FTP, you may have accidentally changed the permissions, etc. 
Make sure nobody else was in there either. You mentioned you have other people updating it. Be suspicious    Check your server logs. And clear your cache. Check your host's news, they may have changed something. Look for your php.ini or httaccess files to see if they have changed.

Now, are you saying that
1) all the WB administration pages are blank or
2) the front-end displays blank pages to visitors?

If it's #1), I would try reinstalling again and see if you see anything before you restore the database.  (actually, I'd probably do that, regardless)

If it's #2), can you restore the database and then:

a) see the Pages and content in the Pages administration area, it's just not displayed to visitors?
b) check the database and see if your content is there
c) if a or b is true, but the output is still a blank web page for visitors, view the source in the browser and see if there is anything there.
 - if your text content is there but invisible, the colours or division placement could be messed up
 - if your content is not there at all, but some HTML is there,
    - check the index.php file in your template directory. There should be an include content(...); statement in the index.php file.
  - if there is no HTML at all, and your index.php file is there... I have run out of ideas at this point.

[ruebenwurzel]

Hello,

if you deleted all files on your host and then reeinstalled WB and then used the backup of your database your page could definetely not work as all needed pages files in the pages directory are no more available. As long as you dont get these files back your page will not work.

So in your case i would delete all again and then install a new clean WB 2.6.7 and create your whole pages from scratch.

Matthias

[dadio]

Thanks for the answer!! See my response in your message.

Alex.

I won't likely be much help, but more information will help.

Oh, but first... Standard response: check the file permissions. Especially since you were in FTP, you may have accidentally changed the permissions, etc. 
Make sure nobody else was in there either. You mentioned you have other people updating it. Be suspicious    Check your server logs. And clear your cache.

Is this my server cache?? How do I clear it?

Check your host's news, they may have changed something. Look for your php.ini or httaccess files to see if they have changed.

Now, are you saying that
1) all the WB administration pages are blank or
2) the front-end displays blank pages to visitors?

I am saying #2!! There is no more problem with the WB admin pages, I see those fine. But the front-end displays either blank pages or 403 Forbidden error page. The 403 error I can fix easily by change the file permissions. Now for the front-end displaying blank pages, see below my answer for more details.

If it's #1), I would try reinstalling again and see if you see anything before you restore the database.  (actually, I'd probably do that, regardless)

It's not #1.

If it's #2), can you restore the database and then:

Yes it's #2.

a) see the Pages and content in the Pages administration area, it's just not displayed to visitors?

Yes that's it!!

b) check the database and see if your content is there

Yes it is there!! I did a db backup, so after reinstalling WB from scratch using the install script, I delete the emptey db WB had created and restored my old db with all the data in it. Everything is there still.

c) if a or b is true, but the output is still a blank web page for visitors, view the source in the browser and see if there is anything there.

The source is blank as well!!

- if your text content is there but invisible, the colours or division placement could be messed up.
 - if your content is not there at all, but some HTML is there,
    - check the index.php file in your template directory. There should be an include content(...); statement in the index.php file.
  - if there is no HTML at all, and your index.php file is there... I have run out of ideas at this point.

My situation seems to be the last one you mentioned. The front-end displays blank pages and the source of these blank pages are also blank!!

I truly hope you can get some other ideas beyond this point!!  I will try to think of some myself and will update if I get something new.

Thanks!

Alex.

[dadio]

Hello,

if you deleted all files on your host and then reeinstalled WB and then used the backup of your database your page could definetely not work as all needed pages files in the pages directory are no more available. As long as you dont get these files back your page will not work.

Ok, I realized I did not express myself properly. I said I removed all the files from the WB directory, but I did not delete them completely. I moved them on a backup folder of my server. So I still have all the files that I ca use.

After I backed up my files, I installed WB 2.6.5 fresh and then I restored my backed up WB db, and then I copied over all the files under the pages directory from my backed up files into the pages directory of the newly installed WB.

So all my files are there. Some of them I still have to give the right file permissions since I get the 403 error. The fact that I get a 403 error demonstrates that apache sees the files but prevents access to them. The front-end pages that are blank are all there in the pages directory.

One more thing, I'm using the all CSS template that comes with WB 2.6.5 so this should not be a problem. Is there anything else from my backed up files that I need to copy over for the whole thing to work??

Thanks again for all the help!!

Alex.

So in your case i would delete all again and then install a new clean WB 2.6.7 and create your whole pages from scratch.

Matthias

[spida]

Hi everybody,

this thread is a little older, but I want to contribute my newest experiences with the exactly same problem - in case it might serve someone as help.

I wasn't able to see an media in the backend and got 404 errors in the frontpage. Reason was simply the missing leading slash in the option settings for the pages and the media directories.
It was supposed to be "/pages" and "/media".

A blank page (index) in the output was result of missing templates. After copying them back the output was OK again.

The only downside of re-installing WB in my case is, that I have to re-edit the backend template. Oh well, if this was always the sole problem... 

Best regards to the WB community,
Ayshe